several great new (well, recent anyway - framework has been suffering from an excess of waiting material for a long, long time now) releases this week, and an exciting opportunity for listener participation!  if you missed the chance, fear not, we'll be repeating it in our next regular edition in 2 weeks time, or you can download or stream this edition from the website.  so you have no excuse!  i'll explain more in a moment...

 

we listened to several tracks from a 3cd compilation called 'nekton falls', which features many names framework listeners will recognise, and many that they won't.  too much on here to squeeze everything we wanted into one show, so we'll be coming back to hear a few more selections next time.  meanwhile, we heard two long excerpts from matt shoemaker's excellent release on the helen scarsdale agency, 'spots in the sun'.  this is really a wonderful disc - gritty, hunched over, dense textures and layers, just how we like it!  we also heard several tracks from another new name (for us), and a surprising name at that: herpes o deluxe provided us with some well constructed crunch.  all this along with a blending of two uk street scenes - we took rob grant's recording of london's green lanes and intertwined it with nick sellen's portrait of reading - can you tell which is which?

 

some background on our listener participation segment: sometime last year i received an unsolicited heavy-pressed single-sided 7" vinyl record in the post.  no package, letter, sleeve, nothing - just a record with a stamp and my address on it, and a small sticker in the center with a request.  the request was that i play the record back in my home, record it ambiently, and return both record and recording to a specified address.  months later, i finally got around to doing this, and in the process thought, what better way to support this project than to broadcast the record on framework and call to arms all it's loyal listeners?  so that's what i've done: near the end of this edition (around minute 50, if you're downloading) you will find sebastiane hegarty's piece 'mo (nu) ment', which was recorded from his bedroom window during a 3 minute silence held for the victims of the asian tsunami disaster of 2005.  play it back over whatever speakers you have, record it with whatever you have at hand, and, dear listener, send it back to us here at framework.  if we get enough we'll broadcast a selection of them, and forward them on to sebastiane for his project.  so there you go.  to arms!